Cool study on aerotolerant methanogens! Options they might protect themselves from O2 include biofilm formation in response to O2 exposure and antioxidants (F420-H2-oxidases, rubredoxins, thioredoxins, and peroxiredoxins). This opens up a vareity of new possible habitats for methanogens.

New preprint up now! Interested in the evolution of halophily within DPANN archaea we decided to investigate the sister phylum to the Nanohaloarchaeota, GTDB phylum EX4484-52, for which we propose the name Caliditerrarchaeota www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Masterpiece paper from Ning, Perran, Amelia and co! Great mix of field-based geochemistry, laboratory manipulations, methanogen cultivation, and isolate / environmental genomics. An unexpected feedback between eutrophication and climate change that could shake up how we think about methane budgets.

1/3 Electricity from air! In the top journal Nano Energy today, we report the first fuel cell that makes power from air alone. We achieved this by using the enzyme Huc to oxidize ambient hydrogen. This results in a continuous low-level power from air and higher outputs with industrial waste gases.

Does the atmosphere harbour a resident, growing microbial ecosystem? ⛅ Here in @jgrbiogeo.bsky.social we outline how theoretical tools 📝 & modelling 💻 can bring us closer to the answer Congrats lead author @drmartinezrabert.bsky.social @mioceanologie.bsky.social 🧵 thread 👇 tinyurl.com/7pdfm7uw

Our article showing energy production from air alone is in PNAS today. This paper provides an ultimate biochemical proof that microbes can survive simply by 'making' energy from air (making two ATP per molecule atmospheric H2 consumed) and has biotech applications. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵

Extraordinary keynote lecture by Prof. Chris Greening @greening.bsky.social about Microbial oxidation of atmospheric trace gases: from enzymes to ecosystems. #FEMS2025 @femsmicro.org

Getting inspired @femsmicro.org ! Thanks @greening.bsky.social for the very interesting talk !

Day 3 at #fems2025 started with an exciting and inspiring keynote by Chris @greening.bsky.social on microbes living out of thin air @femsmicro.org

That's only half the issue - check out these great Reviews, too! 📝 Oxygen-adapted hydrogenases - @greening.bsky.social et al 📝 RNA processing in innate immunity - Kristen Lynch et al 📝 connexins and pannexins beyond the cell surface - Henrique Girao et al

Our new consensus statement on reducing and reporting contamination in microbiome studies is the cover image of this month's Nature Microbiology: www.nature.com/articles/s41... In the cover photo, you can see our postdoc Sophie Holland in fully PPE sampling the atmosphere of terrestrial Antarctica.

Guess who's the coverboi for @natmicrobiol.nature.com this month? 💁 A huge shout-out to Dr Rachael Lappan for entrusting me to carry out the sampling for this incredibly cool atmosphere microbiome project on her behalf, & to Braydon Moloney for capturing this moment in Antarctica last summer. [1/2]

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hope this is useful - consensus statement "Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies" rdcu.be/er3Io

An editorial in @natmicrobiol.nature.com highlighted issues with reports dealing with low-biomass microbiome. A new consensus statement provides guidelines to prevent and report contamination in low-biomass studies. A step towards ensuring rigour! #MIcrobiomeSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A new Consensus Statement led by @greening.bsky.social and @noahfierer.bsky.social in @natmicrobiol.nature.com Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies ❗A must-read for anyone working in this field #microsky 🧪🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After some more awesome science from amongst others @greening.bsky.social, Simon Newstead & @martinsteinegger.bsky.social and unfortunately a long drive back home, we made it back to Umeå! Thank you #Sweprot and all participants for the great company and hopefully see you next year!

Online now - the Review "Diverse lineages and adaptations of oxygen-adapted #hydrogenases" from @greening.bsky.social, @rhyswg.bsky.social‬, and colleagues. #metalloenzyme #evolution #O2Tolerant #O2Sensitive #GasChannels Read it here 👉 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lA2s3S6Gf...

I'm absolutely taken by your work – and your team's work – on how microbes get by living from "thin air". it's only a "paradigm shift' for microbiologists brought up with the idea that bugs live by "feast or famine", what they do not only in the lab. but the famine part is way more interesting...

Energy from air? No problem! In our new preprint, we reconstitute the machinery that allows microbes to endure starvation. By using the trace amounts of hydrogen in air alone, they produce plenty of chemical energy (2 ATP) to get by. The only byproduct? Water. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hydrogenase-driven ATP synthesis from air www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... New work from us where we put the Huc hydrogenase to work to see if it can generate a proton motive force. It can! cc: @ashleighkropp.bsky.social @rhyswg.bsky.social @greening.bsky.social

Wonderful opportunity. So excited for where Sophie and our team have taken the Antarctic program.

Our latest preprint reveals how new ecosystems form. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Combining ecological, genomic, and activity based approaches, we reveal the first colonisers are highly flexible microbes that use rock-derived and atmospheric energy sources. Photosynthesis isn't so important. 1/2

#LorneProteins2025 Chris Greening - enzymatically driven ATP and electricity generation from air. Organisms that can live on air. Passive diffusion. Trace gas oxidation widespread strategy. Soil bacteria - Important for atmosphere, biodiversity and ecosystems! Amazing work supported by a great team

Our lab has come back refreshed from our annual retreat. Blending personal/scientific talks with group discussions and team activities. I come away amazed by our team -- not just for our science, but for how mature, caring, and forward-thinking everyone is. So proud! P.S. Can you guess the microbe?

Methanol transfer supports metabolic syntrophy between bacteria and archaea www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In Nature Chemical Biology today, we reveal how microbes clean our atmospheres by consuming carbon monoxide (CO) gas. A methodological tour de force from Ashleigh Kropp, Rhys Grinter, and David Gillett with broad implications for the atmosphere and bioenergetics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Extensive new preprint with Ying Teng's lab on how carbon monoxide affects soil communities and activities. Contrary to popular belief, CO at biologically relevant concentrations mainly stimulates rather than inhibits growth. Diverse bacteria grow and fix CO2 with it. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Completely agree. The field also critically needs biochemists, biogeochemists, and true ecologists too. To become more mechanistic rather than observational, and bounded in biogeochemical principles and ecological frameworks. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Melbourne Pride (Midsumma) started yesterday. Very thankful to live in such a cosmopolitan and progressive city.

I apologise for HydDB being down. Aarhus University decided to stop hosting it at quite short notice. However, we plan to relaunch first thing next year and are in the midst of creating a much-needed HydDB 2.0. HydDB 1.0 is good for hydrogenase information, but our HMMs best for classification. 1/2

New life goal unlocked! Getting to work on marsupials, including kangaroos, koalas, and my all time faves, wombats. Privileged to help on this great UQ-led study showing differences in hydrogen cycling and electron flow explain low methane emissions in marsupials. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

GRWM to fly to #Antarctica tomorrow! Our flight from Cape Town aims to land in the coldest part of the "night", for the best runway conditions, so this is everything I'll be wearing when I step off the plane and onto the ice ❄️ #SAEFgoesSouth

Huge congrats to Cait Welsh for submitting her PhD thesis today. As reflected in the preprint below, Cait has bridged methods to understand gas cycling in the human gut in health and disease. Also a huge source of enthusiasm, innovation and support over the years. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

One of the joys of my HoD role is to see the excellence of our PhD students being recognised. Very proud of Dr Bob Leung, recipient of the Mollie Holman award for excellence in graduate research, @monashuniversity.bsky.social supervised by @greening.bsky.social, Congrats to all the award recipients

Enormous congratulations to Bob (Pok Man) Leung for receiving the Mollie Holman Award for Thesis Excellence. Bob was an exceptionally visionary, collaborative, and productive PhD student valued by all. He received an ARC DECRA Fellowship earlier this year to develop an independent program.

Nature Communications are constantly threatening me with a $9000+ invoice for a journal article that didn't even involve me. Told their editorial and debt team multiple times, but it continues and have been referred to debt collection agency. I'm not involved in any way. 😲

You hear about our successes a lot on here, but I don't talk enough about the rejections. As of today, 10 out of the 12 grants members of our lab put in this year didn't get up. Most grants were led by early-career researchers in/with our team as a way for them to lead independent programs. 1/3

Great to see our work on the #cryoem structure of the human TSC:WIPI3 lysosomal recruitment complex! Awesome effort from co-authors @charlesbj.bsky.social and Laura D'Andrea with @drellisdon.bsky.social doing the heavy lifting leading the project. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Honoured to receive Monash University's inaugural Researcher of the Year award last night. Since starting my group eight years ago, the university has enabled us to do creative, impactful, often programmatic research. This award recognises a huge collective effort from our team and collaborators.

Methanogenesis outside the Euryarchaeota experimentally demonstrated by three cultivation-driven studies (two from my lab)! A long🧵.🐻with me tinyurl.com/4v4fkda6 tinyurl.com/yr4p7js6 tinyurl.com/mtsrj6b9

The atmosphere: a transport medium or an active microbial ecosystem? From @greening.bsky.social et al. academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

In our new paper at Cell (@CellCellPress), we reveal secrets of how the third form of life, archaea, make energy. We uncover new lineages of hydrogen-using enzymes, both minimal and complex. These help archaea thrive in deep dark anoxic environments. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Introducing aerotrophy! In this new preprint, we show that aerated caves are continually energised by atmospheric trace gases. The most abundant and active microbes fix carbon using hydrogen and methane gas. Huge collective effort led with Sean Bay and Steven Chown. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Elated to receive the Prime Minister's Prize for Life Scientist of the Year yesterday. Reflects a massive team effort from our wonderful team past and present. Also so thankful to my collaborators, mentors, teachers, supporters, and funders. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Dv...

congratulations, chris 👏 www.monash.edu/discovery-in... #MikroSky 🦠🧫

Really nice paper about photosynthesis in Myxococcota - the 9th bacterial phylum with photosynthesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An often neglected enzyme forming N2O might play a bigger role than previously thought. Very interesting preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We have two Prof-level posts open at IMI Birmingham: Microbial Genomics www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DBJ457/c... Respiratory Infection Biology www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DBJ427/c... Deadline is 30 Sept! Email @alanmcn1.bsky.social or me with questions